Max Barry Talks About Kellan & His New Role

From source: Blackbook
Kellan Lutz is playing the Asian character Sneaky Pete, right? That’s a pretty big change.
It is. The director called me up—Skyped me up—and said he was thinking of casting a non-Asian actor as Sneaky Pete, and he asked me if I was okay with that. The thing with Kellan Lutz was that they had the opportunity to get him, and he’s a great actor, and it also solved a kind of screenwriting problem. The idea with the Sneaky Pete character in the book is that he’s using a racist stereotype to unease people, to get ahead, and that’s something you’ve got to do right, or otherwise it just comes off as racist.

And were you okay with them casting Kellan?
Oh, yeah. I only got to see a little bit of what he does, but he’s an extraordinary human being. I mean, it’s hard to believe he’s quite real. He’s the idealized form of a human, you know? Like, if someone had to invent a human being they would carve Kellan out of stone. When you stand next to someone like that you feel like you’re this kind of poor attempt at a human standing next to the real thing.

Source: via KellanLutzOnline